The present invention relates to the field of communication networks, and in particular to the systems and methods for ensuring the provision of minimum wireless network bandwidth to wireless network devices. Communications networks allow computers and other electronic devices to exchange data. Wireless networks, which exchange data without wires, typically using radio waves, are popular with users due to the ability to send and receive data almost anywhere within the physical coverage area of the network. This allows users to access communication networks, including local area networks, organization or company intranets, virtual private networks, and wide area networks, such as the Internet, anywhere within the physical coverage area of the wireless networks.
Networking devices may handle packets generated by and directed to large numbers of clients over the same interface. The bandwidth or data communications capacity of networking devices limits the amount of data or the rate of network packets passing through network devices. The limits on bandwidth are particularly acute in network devices including wireless network interfaces. If the bandwidth limit of a networking device is reached or exceeded by its clients network traffic, packets may be delayed or dropped. Depending on the type of data being communicated over the network, these traffic disruptions caused by reaching or exceeding bandwidth limit of a networking device may adversely affect the performance of applications on a client. For example, clients receiving voice or streaming video data may be adversely affected by even small delays or losses of packets.
Because of the limits on network device bandwidth, many network devices include quality of service (QoS) functionality. Quality of service functionality allows network administrators to provide different priority for packets or other network data based on factors such as the associated client, user, client application, or data flow. Typically, users, clients, or applications are assigned to different quality of service profiles. Each quality of service profile specifies a quality of service parameters to associated packets or other network data. Networking devices use the scheduling weights to prioritize packet traffic and potentially guarantee a minimum level of performance to some or all of the network data flows.
Unfortunately, there are situations in which a wireless network device cannot provide a minimum level of performance to some or all of its associated network traffic flows. This may be occur for a number of reasons, including RF interference or a client device that is malfunctioning, mis-configured, or near the limit of its reception range. In these situations, many types of network traffic prioritization or compensation will have little or no effect of the network connection performance; thus, allocating additional bandwidth, airtime, or other network resources to these network connections is wasteful. However, because prior QoS functions do not attempt to diagnose the cause of network congestion, they waste network resources on attempting to improve the performance of network connections in these situations.